Van Eck To Self-Index Africa, Mideast ETFs

Van Eck filed regulatory paperwork in May detailing index shifts for two of its ETFs to in-house indexes created by the company’s own indexing subsidiary.

The planned changes, which should take effect by early summer, cover the Market Vectors Africa ETF (NYSE Arca: AFK) and the Market Vectors Gulf States ETF (NYSE Arca: MES), and are just the latest of a series of similar index shifts the company has carried out since establishing its own Frankfurt-based indexing unit last year.

The Africa ETF “AFK” will shift to the Market Vectors GDP Africa Index from its current benchmark, the Dow Jones Africa Titans 50 Index; the Mideast ETF, “MES,” will switch to the Market Vectors GDP GCC Index from the Dow Jones GCC Titans 40 Index, according to the paperwork and the company’s website.

The existing indexes are rules-based, modified capitalization-weighted, float-adjusted benchmarks, but for each of the two new Market Vectors indexes, the weighting of each country is determined by the size of its gross domestic product relative to the GDPs of the other countries represented in the respective indexes.

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